Clayton J. and Henry R. Barber Professor of Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and Co-Chairman, Board of Directors, The Federalist Society
STEVEN GOW CALABRESI is the Clayton J. & Henry R. Barber Professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. He has also co-taught in the Fall semester at Yale Law School from 2013 to the present. Calabresi clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia and Judges Robert H. Bork and Ralph K. Winter. He was a Special Assistant to Attorney General Meese from 1985 to 1987 and worked with Ken Cribb as his deputy in 1987 on the second floor of the West Wing of the Reagan White House. Calabresi has written books on presidential power and comparative constitutional law and the origins of judicial review. He and Gary Lawson are the co-editors of a casebook on U.S. Constitutional Law, and Calabresi is also the co-editor of a casebook on comparative constitutional law. He has written over seventy law review articles since 1990.
Partner, O'Melveny & Myers LLP
Walter Dellinger is an influential authority on appellate and Supreme Court decisions, lending his experience as a former Solicitor General and decades of legal knowledge to amicus briefs, a multitude of pro bono clients, and public and private companies involved in bet-the-company litigation. A frequent commentator for the Wall Street Journal, Slate, and major television networks, Walter holds the designation of the Douglas B. Maggs Emeritus Professor of Law at Duke University. He was named one of the 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America by the National Law Journal and recognized with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Lawyer.
Walter, who formerly served as O’Melveny’s Diversity and Inclusion Partner, helped convince the US Supreme Court that proponents of Proposition 8, California's ban on same-sex marriage, did not have standing to appeal a court order invalidating it. That ruling, Hollingsworth v. Perry, cleared the way for marriage equality in California and eventually nationwide.
Walter served as Assistant Attorney General and head of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) from 1993 to 1996. He was acting Solicitor General for the 1996-97 Term of the US Supreme Court. During that time, Walter argued nine cases before the Court, the most by any Solicitor General in more than 20 years. His arguments included cases dealing with physician-assisted suicide, the line item veto, the cable television act, the Brady Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the constitutionality of remedial services for parochial school children.
Walter has served as Special Counsel to the Board of Directors of the New York Stock Exchange in connection with the NYSE’s transformation into a publicly held company and its acquisition of an electronic trading company.
After serving in early 1993 in the White House as an advisor to the President on constitutional issues, Walter was nominated by the President to be Assistant Attorney General. He was confirmed by the Senate in October 1993 and served for three years. As head of the OLC, Walter issued opinions on a wide variety of issues, including: the President's authority to deploy United States forces in Haiti and Bosnia; whether the trade agreements required treaty ratification; and a major review of separation of powers questions. He provided extensive legal advice on questions arising out of the shutdown of the federal government, on national debt ceiling issues, and on loan guarantees for Mexico.
Walter has published articles on constitutional issues for scholarly journals including the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, and the Duke Law Journal, and has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek, the New Republic, and the London Times. He has been a visiting professor at the Catholic University of Belgium and has given lectures to university faculties in Florence, Siena, Nuremberg, Copenhagen, Leiden, Utrecht, Tilburg, Mexico, and Rio de Janeiro, and has delivered major lectures at Stanford, Yale, Harvard, Michigan, Berkeley, Penn, Duke, Chicago, and other US law schools. He has testified more than 25 times before committees of Congress.
In private practice, Walter’s arguments before the United States Supreme Court have included Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker, Morgan Stanley Capital Group Inc. v. Public Utility District No. 1 of Snohomish County, Alabama v. North Carolina, Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC, Heller v. District of Columbia, Jackson v. Birmingham School District, Brown v. Legal Foundation of Washington, US Airways v. Barnett, Utah v. Evans, Hunt v. Cromartie, and Hunt v. Easley. His most notable Court of Appeals and state supreme court arguments include Martha Stewart v. United States, Whiteside v. United States, and Exxon v. Alabama, LCI v. Phillips.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Edith Jones graduated from Alamo Heights High School, where she was a National Merit Scholar. In 1971, she received her B.A. in Economics from Cornell University, graduating with honors. In 1974, she was awarded her J.D. at the University of Texas Law School, where she was a law review editor and received the Order of the Coif.
Judge Jones was the first female partner at Andrews, Kurth, Campbell & Jones (now Hunton Andrews Kurth) where she practiced various types of litigation and bankruptcy cases. Judge Jones went on the federal bench on June 1, 1985.
Judge Jones served as a former member of the National Bankruptcy Review Commission, and as a member of the Judicial Conference Commission on Bankruptcy Rules. Judge Jones served on the White House Fellows Commission. Judge Jones served on the board of the Sam Houston Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America. She has been a member of the Garland Walker Inn of Court in Houston for more than 20 years and its President for at least ten years. Judge Jones is also on the Board of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation.
Distinguished University Professor, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
University Professor Nelson Lund is the author of Rousseau’s Rejuvenation of Political Philosophy: A New Introduction. He has also written widely in the field of constitutional law, including articles on constitutional interpretation, federalism, separation of powers, the Second Amendment, the Commerce Clause, the Speech or Debate Clause, the Equal Protection Clause, and the Uniformity Clause. In addition, he has published articles in the fields of employment discrimination and civil rights, the legal regulation of medical ethics, and the application of economic analysis to legal institutions and legal ethics.
Professor Lund graduated from St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, after which he received an MA in philosophy from the Catholic University of America and a PhD in political science from Harvard University. He left the faculty of the University of Chicago to attend its law school, where he served as executive editor of the University of Chicago Law Review and chapter chairman of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. After law school, he held positions at the United States Department of Justice in the Office of the Solicitor General and the Office of Legal Counsel. He also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Patrick E. Higginbotham of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and to the Honorable Sandra Day O'Connor of the United States Supreme Court. Following his clerkship with Justice O'Connor, Professor Lund served in the White House as associate counsel to the president from 1989 to 1992.
Since joining the faculty at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School, Professor Lund has taught Constitutional Law, Legislation, Federal Election Law, Employment Discrimination, State and Local Government, and seminars on the Second Amendment and on a variety of topics in Jurisprudence.
Chairman and Founding General Counsel, Institute for Justice
William H. (Chip) Mellor serves as chairman and founding general counsel of the Institute for Justice, which he co-founded in 1991. He was IJ’s president and general counsel from 1991 to 2015. He has litigated cutting-edge constitutional cases nationwide protecting economic liberty, property rights, school choice and the First Amendment, notably achieving the first federal appellate court victory for economic liberty under the 14th Amendment since the New Deal by overturning Tennessee’s prohibition on retail casket sales.
Under Mellor’s leadership IJ pioneered a new approach to strategic public interest litigation that combines courtroom advocacy with award-winning media relations, activism and strategic research to secure constitutional protection for individual rights. He grew IJ from a five-person startup into the National Law Firm for Liberty with a staff of nearly 100, including over 40 attorneys, and an annual budget of $20 million. IJ is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, and has offices in Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Minnesota, Texas and Washington state.
While Mellor was president, IJ litigated five U.S. Supreme Court cases, winning all but one: In Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, IJ successfully defended Cleveland’s school choice program from a lawsuit brought by the teachers’ unions and other school choice opponents, establishing the constitutionality of school vouchers. In Granholm v. Heald, the Supreme Court struck down New York’s ban on interstate wine sales, allowing small wineries and consumers represented by IJ to successfully challenge a government-imposed wholesale wine and liquor monopoly. In Kelo v. City of New London, the Supreme Court ruled against IJ in a controversial 5–4 decision that held private property can be taken for private development. IJ mobilized unprecedented public outrage over the decision to secure legislative reforms or state supreme court decisions in 46 states that strengthened protection for property rights. In Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn, the Supreme Court dismissed an Establishment Clause challenge to Arizona’s scholarship tax credit program because the Court recognized that individuals who donate to private, nonprofit scholarship-granting organizations spend their own money—not state funds. In Arizona Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett, the Supreme Court struck down a key provision of Arizona’s system of government-funded campaigns, which showered money on campaigns that took government funding when privately financed and independent speakers opposing them spoke more than the government wanted.
Mellor co-authored with the Cato Institute’s Robert Levy The Dirty Dozen: How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom, which examines 12 Supreme Court cases that effectively amended the Constitution and profoundly reshaped the role of government in America. In The Dirty Dozen, Mellor and Levy argue for judicial engagement and for a Supreme Court that will protect individual rights and restore limits on government power.
Mellor launched the Institute for Justice Clinic on Entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago in 1998 and IJ’s Center for Judicial Engagement in 2011.
Mellor’s work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, USA Today, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, Boston Globe, New York Post, National Law Journal, Reason, National Review, Investor’s Business Daily, and all the major television and radio networks. In a 2012 broadcast of his Fox Business show Stossel, John Stossel named Mellor a “Champion of Freedom.”
Prior to founding IJ, Mellor served as president of the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, a nationally recognized think tank located in San Francisco. Under his leadership, the Institute commissioned and published path-breaking books on economic liberty, property rights, and technology and the First Amendment that formed the long-term, strategic litigation blueprint for the Institute for Justice.
Mellor also served in the Reagan Administration as deputy general counsel for legislation and regulations in the Department of Energy, and from 1979 to 1983 he practiced public interest law with Mountain States Legal Foundation in Denver. Mellor received his J.D. from the University of Denver School of Law in 1977. He graduated from Ohio State University in 1973.
Read Mellor’s speech launching the Institute for Justice: “The Quest for Justice: Natural Rights and the Future of Public Interest Law.”
Mellor was awarded the Bradley Prize in 2012, was recognized by the American Bar Association as a Legal Rebel – an individual who remakes their corner of the legal profession – and was profiled in the Wall Street Journal Weekend Interview on January 7, 2012, as well as in Reason magazine in March 2008.
William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Professor Tushnet, who graduated from Harvard College and Yale Law School and served as a law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall, specializes in constitutional law and theory, including comparative constitutional law. His research includes studies examining (skeptically) the practice of judicial review in the United States and around the world. He also writes in the area of legal and particularly constitutional history, with works on the development of civil rights law in the United States and (currently) a long-term project on the history of the Supreme Court in the 1930s. This fall he is organizing a conference on American constitutional development and another that features a conversation among several current and former judges on the world's constitutional courts.
United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit
James Harvie Wilkinson III is an Article III federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He joined the Court in 1984 after being nominated by President Ronald Reagan.
Born in New York City, New York, Wilkinson graduated from Yale University with his Bachelor's degree in 1967. Wilkinson served in the United States Army from 1968 to 1969 and received his Juris Doctor degree from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1972.
On the recommendation of Virginia U.S. Senator John Warner, Wilkinson was nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit by President Ronald Reagan on January 30, 1984 to a seat vacated by John Butzner, Jr.,. Wilkinson was confirmed by the Senate on August 9, 1984 on a Senate vote and received commission on August 13, 1984. Wilkinson served as the Chief Judge of the Court from 1996 to 2003.
Founder and Director, James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights & the American Founding
Hadley Arkes joined the faculty of Amherst College in 1966. He became the Edward Ney Professor of Jurisprudence in 1987, and held that chair until he retired officially in July 2015. But he has not retired from writing and speaking. He has carried that teaching into a new phase; he has become the Founder and Director of the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights and the American Founding in Washington, D.C. He has written eight books, mostly with Princeton and Cambridge University Presss. Among the books at Princeton have been: The Philosopher in the City (1981), First Things (1986), Beyond the Constitution (1990), and The Return of George Sutherland (1994). With Cambridge Press he has done Natural Rights and the Right to Choose (2002), and Constitutional Illusions & Anchoring Truths: The Touchstone of the Natural Law (2010). His most recent book, with Regnery Press is Mere Natural Law (2023) His articles have appeared in professional journals, but apart from his writing in more scholarly formats, he has become known to a wider audience through his writings in the Wall Street Journal, National Review, Civitas and First Things, a journal that took its name from his book of that title.
He was the main advocate, and architect, of the bill that became known as the Born-Alive Infants’ Protection Act. The account of his experience, in moving the bill through Congress, is contained as an epilogue or memoir in his book, Natural Rights & the Right to Choose. Arkes first prepared his proposal as part of the debating kit assembled for the first George Bush in 1988. The purpose of that proposal was to offer the “most modest first step” of all in legislating on abortion, and opening a conversation even with people who called themselves “pro-choice.” Professor Arkes proposed to begin simply by preserving the life of a child who survived an abortion–contrary to the holding of one federal judge, that such a child was not protected by the laws. Professor Arkes led the testimony on the bill before the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House in July 2000, then again in July 2001. The legislative calendar was upended in the aftermath of September 11th, but in March 2002, the bill was brought to the floor of the House, where it passed unanimously. To the surprise of Professor Arkes, the bill was brought to the floor of the Senate on July 18 by the Deputy Majority Leader, Harry Reid, and passed in the same way. On August 5, President Bush signed the bill into law with Professor Arkes in attendance.
Professor Arkes was the founder, at Amherst, of the Committee for the American Founding, a group of alumni and students seeking to preserve, at Amherst, the doctrines of “natural rights” taught by the American Founders and Lincoln. That interest has been carried over now to the founding of a new center for the jurisprudence of natural law, in Washington, D.C.: the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights and the American Founding, named for one of the premier minds among the American Founders. Professor Arkes has drawn to this project a cluster of accomplished federal judges who have wanted to get a firmer hold on the natural law, and brought them together with some gifted teachers of philosophy and law. The new institute will be sponsoring lectures and seminars in Washington and other parts of the country. The purpose of this new James Wilson Institute is to teach anew, to lawyers, judges, and students those principles of law that furnished the guide to the American Founders as they set about framing a Constitution. And the hope is to restore, to a new generation, the furnishings of mind of the men who formed this regime.
Special Counsel, Hunton Andrews Kurth
After serving on the United State Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit from 2005, Judge Griffith stepped down from the bench in 2020. Currently he is a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, a Fellow at the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University, and Special Counsel in the Washington, DC office of the law firm of Hunton Andrews Kurth. Most recently, he was a member of President Biden's Commission on the Supreme Court. He is the author of Civic Charity and the Constitution , and the co-author, along with former judges Michael Luttig and Michael McConnell, of Lost, Not Stolen: The Conservative Case that Trump Lost and Biden Won the 2020 Presidential Election. https://lostnotstolen.org/ . Before being appointed to the D. C. Circuit, Judge Griffith was the General Counsel at BYU; Senate Legal Counsel, the non-partisan chief legal officer of the U. S. Senate; and a partner at Wiley, Rein & Fielding. Long active in rule-of-law programs in former communist nations, Judge Griffith is a member of the international advisory board of the CEELI Institute in Prague. He is a graduate of BYU and the University of Virginia School of Law and is a member of the American Law Institute.
Former Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Judge Kozinski served as a United States Circuit Judge for the Ninth Circuit from November 1985 until December 2017. He served as Chief Judge from 2007 to 2014. He graduated from UCLA, receiving an A.B. degree in 1972, and from UCLA Law School, receiving a J.D. degree in 1975.
Prior to his appointment to the appellate bench, Judge Kozinski served as Chief Judge of the United States Claims Court, 1982-85; Special Counsel, Merit Systems Protection Board, 1981-82; Assistant Counsel, Office of Counsel to the President, 1981; Deputy Legal Counsel, Office of President-Elect Reagan, 1980-81; Attorney, Covington & Burling, 1979-81; Attorney, Forry Golbert Singer & Gelles, 1977-79; Law Clerk to Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, 1976-77; and Law Clerk to Circuit Judge Anthony M. Kennedy, 1975-76.
Judge Kozinski is married to Marcy Jane Tiffany and has three children: Yale, Wyatt and Clayton, and three grandchildren: Quinn, Owen and Anna.
Former President & CEO, The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies
Eugene B. Meyer, former President and CEO of the Federalist Society, has served as Executive Director, CEO, and/or President of the organization for more than 40 years. He is responsible for shepherding the organization from a small group of law students to a community of 90,000 lawyers, law students, academics, judges, and others interested in the rule of law. The Society now includes a Student Chapter at nearly every ABA-accredited law school in the country and Lawyers Chapters in 220 major cities across the nation. Gene earned his B.A. in history at Yale in 1975 and his M.A. in political science from the London School of Economics in 1976. Gene currently serves on the boards of the U.S. Chess Center, the Holman Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and the advisory board of the Adam Smith Society. He holds the title of International Chess Master.
President, Cass & Associates, PC
Ronald A. Cass is Dean Emeritus of Boston University School of Law (where he was Dean from 1990-2004), President of Cass & Associates, PC, former Vice-Chairman and Commissioner of the U.S. International Trade Commission, former faculty member at Boston University School of Law and the University of Virginia Law School, and Distinguished Senior Fellow at the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State. Dean Cass also sits as an arbitrator for commercial, international, and intellectual property rights disputes, and is a former United States member of the Panel of Conciliators of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes. He is a member of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States and has received seven presidential appointments, spanning Presidents Ronald Reagan to Donald J. Trump.
As a law professor, lecturer, and scholar, Dean Cass has been teaching and writing about a wide array of legal issues on topics such as administrative law and regulation, antitrust, constitutional law, communications, intellectual property, international trade, separation of powers, and legal process. He has published more than 160 scholarly books, chapters, articles, and papers, including a leading casebook on administrative law. Dean Cass has taught judges as well as students in schools of law, economics, business, and public policy and has held academic appointments in the United States, Europe, and Latin America.
In addition to his academic work, Dean Cass has participated in numerous important legal cases as an amicus, consultant, or expert, and has advised businesses, law firms, investment funds, and government agencies on a range of trade, antitrust, intellectual property, and regulatory issues. He has a broad range of affiliations with professional groups, and has received numerous honors, fellowships and awards.
Dean Cass is a graduate of the University of Virginia and the University of Chicago Law School.
Distinguished Fellow, Hudson Institute
Christopher DeMuth is a distinguished fellow at Hudson Institute. He was president of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) from 1986 to 2008 and was the D.C. Searle Senior Fellow at AEI from 2008 to 2011.
Mr. DeMuth was raised in Kenilworth, Illinois, and attended the Lawrenceville School (1964), Harvard College (A.B. 1968), and the University of Chicago Law School (J.D. 1973). He served as staff assistant to President Richard M. Nixon from 1969 to 1970, working first for Daniel P. Moynihan (then assistant to the President for Urban Affairs) on urban policy matters and then as chairman of the White House Task Force on Environmental Policy. Following law school, he practiced regulatory, antitrust, and general corporate law with Sidley & Austin in Chicago (1973-1976) and was associate general counsel of the Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail) in Philadelphia (1976-1977).
From 1977 to 1981, Mr. DeMuth was lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and director of the Harvard Faculty Project on Regulation. There he taught courses on law, economics, and regulatory policy and conducted and sponsored research on health, safety, environmental, and economic regulation.
Returning to Washington in 1981, Mr. DeMuth served as administrator for information and regulatory affairs in the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, and as executive director of the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief during President Ronald Reagan’s first term of office. From 1984 to 1986, he was managing director of Lexecon Inc., a law-and-economics consulting firm; in 1986, he was also publisher and editor-in-chief of Regulation magazine. He was elected president of the American Enterprise Institute in December 1986.
Many of Mr. DeMuth’s articles, lectures, and occasional talks are posted on his website (https://www.ccdemuth.com).
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit
Judge Hardiman was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on January 9, 2007 and was confirmed by the Senate (95-0) on March 15, 2007. Prior to becoming an appellate judge, Judge Hardiman served as a trial judge on the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania as of November 1, 2003. In 2008, Chief Justice John Roberts appointed Judge Hardiman to the Information Technology Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States. Judge Hardiman was appointed Chairman of the IT Committee in 2013 and served in that capacity until September 2021. In 2021 he was appointed by the Director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts to serve as Chair of the Judiciary IT Security Task Force, which completed its work in fall 2023. Chief Justice Roberts appointed Judge Hardiman to the Board of the Federal Judicial Center to serve from March 2020 until March 2024. As part of his work with the Center, Judge Hardiman now serves as Editor in Chief for the Manual for Complex Civil Litigation, Fifth.
Before entering judicial service, Judge Hardiman handled a wide variety of litigation matters in state and federal trial and appellate courts as a partner at Reed Smith LLP (1999-2003), a partner at Titus & McConomy LLP (1996-1999), and as an associate with its predecessor firm, Cindrich & Titus (1992-1996). Judge Hardiman began his legal career as an associate in the Washington, D.C. office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom (1990-1992).
A 1987 honors graduate of the University of Notre Dame, Judge Hardiman received his law degree in 1990 from the Georgetown University Law Center, where he served as a Notes and Comments Editor on the Georgetown Law Journal. In 2012, Judge Hardiman was elected as a member of the American Law Institute and was elected to its Council in 2019 and its Executive Committee in 2025. Judge Hardiman regularly teaches a seminar on Advanced Constitutional Law at Duquesne University School of Law and a one-week course entitled “Constitutional Law: the First and Second Amendments” at Georgetown University Law Center.
A native of Waltham, Massachusetts, Judge Hardiman has chambers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He and his wife Lori married in 1992 and have three children.
Robert L. Willett Family Professor of Law, Washington and Lee University School of Law
Timothy Stoltzfus Jost, J.D., holds the Robert L. Willett Family Professorship of Law at the Washington and Lee University School of Law. He is a coauthor of a casebook, Health Law, used widely throughout the United States in teaching health law and now in its sixth edition. He is also the author of Health Care at Risk, A Critique of the Consumer-Driven Movement, Health Care Coverage Determinations: An International Comparative Study, Readings in Comparative Health Law and Bioethics, and many articles and book chapters on health care regulation and comparative health law and policy. He has written numerous monographs on legal issues in health care reform for national organizations and blogs regularly for Health Affairs on regulatory issues. He is a consumer representative to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners and a member of the Institute of Medicine.
Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States
Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh was born in Washington, D.C., on February 12, 1965. He married Ashley Estes in 2004, and they have two daughters - Margaret and Liza. He received a B.A. from Yale College in 1987 and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1990. He served as a law clerk for Judge Walter Stapleton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit from 1990-1991, for Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 1991-1992, and for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court during the 1993 Term. In 1992-1993, he was an attorney in the Office of the Solicitor General of the United States. From 1994 to 1997 and for a period in 1998, he was Associate Counsel in the Office of Independent Counsel. He was a partner at a Washington, D.C., law firm from 1997 to 1998 and again from 1999 to 2001. From 2001 to 2003, he was Associate Counsel and then Senior Associate Counsel to President George W. Bush. From 2003 to 2006, he was Assistant to the President and Staff Secretary for President Bush. He was appointed a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2006. President Donald J. Trump nominated him as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and he took his seat on October 6, 2018.
Shareholder, Farney Daniels, PC
Jonathan B. Baker is Professor of Law at American University Washington College of Law, where he teaches courses primarily in the areas of antitrust and economic regulation. He served as the Chief Economist of the Federal Communications Commission from 2009 to 2011, and as the Director of the Bureau of Economics at the Federal Trade Commission from 1995 to 1998. Previously, he worked as a Senior Economist at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, Special Assistant to the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Economics in the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, an Assistant Professor at Dartmouth's Amos Tuck School of Business Administration, an Attorney Advisor to the Acting Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, and an antitrust lawyer in private practice. Professor Baker is the co-author of an antitrust casebook, a past Editorial Chair of Antitrust Law Journal, and a past member of the Council of the American Bar Association’s Section of Antitrust Law. He has published widely in the fields of antitrust law and policy and industrial organization economics. In 2004 he received American University’s Faculty Award for Outstanding Scholarship, Research, and Other Professional Accomplishments, and in 1998 he received the Federal Trade Commission’s Award for Distinguished Service. He has a J.D. from Harvard and a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University.
Richard W. Pogue Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
Professor Daniel Crane is the Richard W. Pogue Professor of Law. He served as the associate dean for faculty and research from 2013 to 2016. He teaches Contracts, Antitrust, Antitrust and Intellectual Property, and Legislation and Regulation.
Crane previously was a professor of law at Yeshiva University's Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and a visiting professor at New York University School of Law and the University of Chicago Law School. In spring 2009, he taught antitrust law on a Fulbright Scholarship at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa in Lisbon.
Crane's work has appeared in the University of Chicago Law Review, the California Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, and the Cornell Law Review, among other journals. He is the author of several books on antitrust law, including Antitrust (Aspen, 2014), The Making of Competition Policy: Legal and Economic Sources (Oxford University Press, 2013), and The Institutional Structure of Antitrust Enforcement (Oxford University Press, 2011).
Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit
Jennifer Walker Elrod is the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She was nominated to the Fifth Circuit in 2007, and she served as a Circuit Judge on the court until assuming the role of Chief Judge in October 2024. Prior to serving as a Circuit Judge, Chief Judge Elrod was appointed and then twice elected Judge of the 190th District Court of Harris County, Texas, where she spent over five years presiding over more than 200 jury and non-jury trials.
Chief Judge Elrod graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she was an active member of the Harvard Federalist Society, an Ames Moot Court finalist, and a Senior Editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. She clerked for the Honorable Sim Lake in the Southern District of Texas. Before serving as a judge, Chief Judge Elrod worked in private practice, focusing on civil litigation, antitrust, and employment matters.
She has been repeatedly recognized for her work as a jurist, as well as for her pro bono work and contributions to the community. She has been named the 2022 Texas Review of Law & Politics’ Jurist of the Year, the 2018 Harvard Federalist Society’s Alumni of the Year, the 2016–17 Texas Association of Civil Trial and Appellate Specialists’ Appellate Judge of the Year, and the 2008 Mexican-American Bar Association of Texas’s Judge of the Year.
Chief Judge Elrod is actively engaged in the academic and legal communities. Chief Judge Elrod currently serves on the Board of Directors and as the Jurist-in-Residence at the South Texas College of Law, where she teaches civil procedure and First Amendment law. She is also a member of the American Law Institute and of the Board of Advisors for the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and she is a former member of the Board of Regents of her alma mater, Baylor University, and the Board of Visitors at Brigham Young University Law School. She previously served as the Chair of the Codes of Conduct Committee for the Judicial Conference of the United States. She has also served as the M.D. Anderson Visiting Public Service Professor at the Texas Tech University School of Law and as Jurist-in-Residence at Brigham Young University Law School, and she has taught legal writing at the University of Houston Law Center. She presented the Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Distinguished Lecture at the Washington and Lee University School of Law and is a frequent speaker on the topics of trial and appellate procedure, ethics, employment law, and constitutional law. Chief Judge Elrod also serves on the board of the Garland R. Walker Inn of Court, and co-produces an annual musical CLE, for which her pupilage group has won multiple national awards.
Chief Judge Elrod’s publications include: Trial by Siri: AI Comes to the Courtroom; Don’t Mess with Texas Judges: In Praise of the State Judiciary; For Good: Enriching Your Practice and Your Life Through Pro Bono and Community Service; Is the Jury Still Out?: A Case for the Continued Viability of the American Jury; and W(h)ither the Jury? The Diminishing Role of the Jury Trial in our Legal System.
Partner, Cooley
Rob McDowell advises telecommunications, media and technology clients on their most significant regulatory, legal and business matters. As a former commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and a highly regarded industry leader, Rob has been at the forefront of the most complex and groundbreaking issues facing telecommunications.
Mr. McDowell was first appointed to the FCC by President George W. Bush in 2006 and again by President Obama in 2009. He was unanimously confirmed both times by the US Senate. During his tenure, Mr. McDowell led efforts to expand consumer access to spectrum through his work on the two largest wireless auctions in US history at the time, played a key role in the 2009 digital television transition and led efforts to establish the first federal civil rights rule in a generation by creating a ban on racially discriminatory practices in broadcast advertising. He also worked extensively on several large and complex mergers, including Sirius/XM and Comcast/NBC-Universal.
He is an advocate for internet freedom, serving on the US delegation to the 2012 World Conference on International Telecommunications and exposing an international bid to regulate vital aspects of the Internet through multilateral treaty-based organizations. Mr. McDowell authored an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal opposing multilateral internet regulation that led to a resolution passed unanimously in the House and Senate, as well as the ultimate defeat of the international bid at a treaty negation in Dubai later that year.
Prior to the FCC, Mr. McDowell was senior vice president for CompTel, the Competitive Telecommunications Association, where he led advocacy efforts before several government agencies, the White House and Congress.
Mr. McDowell is often called upon for speaking engagements and frequently appears on TV and radio. He has written opinion pieces for many high-profile publications, including the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post.
Partner, Antitrust and Competition, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati
Maureen Ohlhausen is a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where she advises industry-leading clients on complex antitrust and litigation matters, with a focus on high-profile cases. Sought after for her depth of experience on antitrust and Federal Trade Commission (FTC)-related issues, Maureen is known for her relationships with officials in the U.S. and abroad.
After finishing law school and clerking at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Maureen joined the FTC in 1997. She held a series of roles at the agency over the next 12 years, rising to the position of Director of the FTC Office of Policy Planning, where she led the agency’s work on e-commerce and headed the FTC’s Internet Access Task Force, which produced an influential report analyzing competition and consumer protection legal issues in the broadband and internet sectors. She then went into private practice at a leading telecommunications law firm, where she headed the FTC practice group.
In 2012, Maureen was confirmed by the Senate as a Commissioner of the FTC and was appointed Acting Chairman in January 2017, a role she held until May 2018. As Acting Chairman, Maureen directed all aspects of the agency’s antitrust work, including merger review, conduct enforcement, and all consumer protection enforcement, with an emphasis on privacy and technology issues. Under her leadership, the FTC won several influential merger challenges in court and reached a number of key digital privacy settlements.
To date, Maureen is the only FTC Commissioner to have received the Robert Pitofsky Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of her contributions to the FTC.
Following the end of her term at the FTC, and immediately prior to joining Wilson Sonsini, Maureen was chair of the global antitrust and competition practice at Baker Botts, based in that firm’s Washington, D.C., office.
A recognized thought leader, Maureen is a frequent author and speaker, and is often quoted by leading print and broadcast media on antitrust, FTC, and privacy and data security matters. She has published dozens of articles on antitrust, privacy, intellectual property, regulation, FTC litigation, telecommunications, and international law issues in prestigious publications. During her tenure at the FTC and in private practice, she testified more than two dozen times before Congress, including before the Senate Commerce Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Antitrust Sub-Committee. She also testified before the Antitrust Modernization Commission.
Nonresident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Ajit Pai, a former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), is a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on issues pertaining to technology and innovation, telecommunications regulatory policy, and market-based incentives for investment in broadband deployment. Concurrently, he is a partner at Searchlight Capital Partners, a global investment firm.
Mr. Pai’s distinguished career at the FCC includes two leadership roles following presidential appointments. He was appointed commissioner by President Barack Obama in 2012, designated chairman by President Donald Trump in 2017, and twice confirmed by the US Senate. While at the helm of the FCC, Mr. Pai had a transformative impact on the future of US technology and communications policy, implementing major initiatives to help close the digital divide; advance US leadership in 5G and other wireless technologies; promote innovation; protect consumers, public safety, and national security; and make the agency itself more open, transparent, and data-driven.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Pai served in various public-sector positions in the FCC’s Office of General Counsel, the US Department of Justice, the US Senate Judiciary Committee, and the US District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. He also worked as a partner at Jenner & Block and associate general counsel at Verizon Communications.
Mr. Pai graduated with honors from Harvard University, where he received a bachelor’s degree, and from the University of Chicago Law School, where he received a law degree and was an editor on the University of Chicago Law Review.
Partner, Bracewell & Giuliani LLP
Jason Hutt advises energy companies, manufacturers, project developers, investor groups and financial institutions about environmental risks and liabilities associated with regulatory compliance, project development, congressional investigations, internal investigations and corporate transactions. He also assists in the defense of administrative, civil and criminal proceedings involving environmental enforcement agencies at the federal and state levels.
Mr. Hutt counsels clients on current and upcoming regulatory developments at the nexus of environmental and energy policy, with focused attention on natural gas development (including hydraulic fracturing), responses to the Deepwater Horizon incident, and climate change. He is nationally recognized for his work on shale gas issues on behalf of producers, oil field services companies, hedge funds and technology developers.
Mr. Hutt routinely is involved in identifying, evaluating and managing environmental risks and opportunities associated with corporate acquisitions, divestitures and financings, including environmental due diligence, purchase and sale agreement negotiation, and post-closing integration efforts. Within the energy sector, his representative experience includes transactions involving petroleum refineries, liquefied natural gas (LNG) import terminals, renewable energy projects (e.g., wind, biofuels and geothermal), natural gas processing plants, cogeneration facilities, oil and gas wells, pipelines, propane retailers and synfuel facilities.
Representative work in other sectors involves operations and industries such as chemical manufacturers, oil field services, independent tank terminal operators, glass manufacturing, textiles manufacturing, uranium mining, industrial cleaning operations, hazardous waste management facilities, paper and plastic manufacturing facilities, and medical equipment manufacturing facilities.
Mr. Hutt performs environmental risk evaluations and advises on permit strategy and contract negotiation in relation to project development. His most recent work has involved onshore and offshore LNG import terminals, highway expansions, coal-fired power plant siting on tribal lands, utility privatizations at military bases, international undersea pipelines, interstate undersea electric transmission cables and a pump-storage project.
Distinguished Professor of Law, Widener University Delaware Law School
James R. May is Distinguished Professor of Law, and Chief Sustainability Officer, Widener University (USA). He also serves as co-Director of the Environmental Rights Institute and co-Director of the Dignity Rights Project at Widener University Delaware Law School. May is also an Adjunct Professor of Graduate Engineering, and founded and co-chairs a program on marine policy. May is the editor of Principles of Constitutional Environmental Law (American Bar Association), and co-editor of Shale Gas and the Future of Energy (Edward Elgar), Global Environmental Constitutionalism (Cambridge), Environmental Constitutionalism in Context (Edward Elgar), New Frontiers in Environmental Constitutionalism (United National Environment Programme, forthcoming), Implementing Environmental Constitutionalism(Cambridge, forthcoming), Standards of Environmental Constitutionalism (Cambridge, forthcoming), and Human Rights and the Environment: Indivisibility, Dignity and Legality (Edward Elgar, forthcoming). May is also author or co-author of more than 100 articles and book chapters, and numerous amicus briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court and U.S. federal courts of appeal on issues including environmental law, constitutional law, comparative constitutional, international environmental law, environmental rights, and human dignity.
May founded two non-profit environmental organizations (the Mid-Atlantic and the Eastern Environmental Law Centers), and has litigated more than 200 public interest environmental claims, including cases throughout the Mid-Atlantic to restore water and air quality, conserve rare species and habitats, and protect biodiversity.
May is a Member of Faculty to the National Judicial College, and a Fellow of the American College of Environmental Lawyers, for whom he has served as a delegate to Haiti and China. May has also served as a consultant to the U.S. Embassy on legal education in the Philippines, and to the Hungarian Embassy and the Moroccan Human Rights Council on constitutional reform. May is a member of Phi Kappa Phi, serves on numerous boards, and has won numerous awards, including from Pace University, Sierra Club, and the American Canoe Association. He earned his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Kansas (Bowman Scholar), J.D. from the University of Kansas (Appellate Advocacy Scholar and national moot court champion), and LL.M. in Environmental Law from Pace University, where he was the Feldshuh Fellow and graduated first in class.
May is a member of the bar in the State of Pennsylvania, several federal courts of appeal, and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Associate Attorney, Sierra Club Environmental Law Program
Craig Segall started at the Sierra Club in 2008 as an environmental law fellow. Before coming to the Club, Craig was a law clerk to the Honorable Marsha S. Berzon of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago and of Stanford Law School, where he spent most of his time in the basement working with Stanford's environmental law clinic. When not practicing law, Craig keeps busy outdoors. In recent years, he has barely beaten a 12-year-old to the top of Mount Whitney, accidentally driven transmission-deep into a salt lake, and, on an ill-advised hike in South Africa, provoked a surprisingly aggressive ostrich.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit
Judge Tymkovich, of Denver, Colorado, was nominated to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals by President George W. Bush, and confirmed in April 2003. On October 1, 2015 he became Chief Circuit Judge and held this position until October 2022. He was Chair of the US Judicial Conference’s Committee on Judicial Resources from 2011 to 2015. Since 2008 he has been an adjunct professor of law at the University of Colorado School of Law, teaching Election Law. He is a member of the Doyle Inn of Court, the American Law Institute, and the International Society of Barristers. Since he joined the Circuit, Judge Tymkovich has hosted judicial delegations from Russia, Kazakhstan, and Afghanistan, and has also represented the United States in programs at Kiev and Yalta in Ukraine.
Professor of Political Science, Brown University
COREY BRETTSCHNEIDER is professor of political science at Brown University, where he teaches courses in political theory and public law. He is also professor, by courtesy, of philosophy. Brettschneider was a Rockefeller faculty fellow at the Princeton University Center for Human Values for the 2010-2011 academic year, a visiting associate professor at Harvard Law School for the 2009 winter term, and a faculty fellow at Harvard's Safra Center for Ethics for the 2006-2007 academic year. Brettschneider received a PhD in politics from Princeton University and a JD from Stanford University. He is the author ofWhen the State Speaks, What Should it Say? How Democracies Can Protect Expression and Promote Equality, (Princeton University Press, 2012) and Democratic Rights: The Substance of Self-Government (Princeton University Press, 2007). Brettschneider is also the author of a casebook, Constitutional Law and American Democracy: Cases and Readings, (Aspen Publishers/Wolters Kluwer Law and Business, 2011). His articles include "A Transformative Theory of Religious Freedom," in Political Theory (2010), "When the State Speaks, What Should it Say? Democratic Persuasion and the Freedom of Expression," in Perspectives on Politics (2010), and "The Politics of the Personal: A Liberal Approach," in the American Political Science Review (2007).
Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law, Columbia Law School; CEO, New Civil Liberties Alliance
Philip Hamburger is the Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, and Chief Executive Officer at the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Before coming to Columbia, he was the John P. Wilson Professor at the University of Chicago Law School.
He writes on constitutional law and its history—with particular emphasis on religious liberty, freedom of speech and the press, judicial office, administrative power, and unconstitutional conditions.
His books are Separation of Church and State (Harvard 2002), Law and Judicial Duty (Harvard 2008), Is Administrative Law Unlawful? (Chicago 2014), The Administrative Threat (Encounter 2017), and Liberal Suppression: Section 501(c)(3) and the Taxation of Speech (Chicago 2018). A forthcoming book is Purchasing Submission: Conditions, Power, and Freedom (Harvard 2021).
He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he has served on the board of directors of the American Society for Legal History. He has twice received the Sutherland Prize for the most significant contribution to English legal history, and has been awarded the Henry Paolucci - Walter Bagehot Book Award, the Hayek Book Prize, and the Bradley Prize.
United States District Court, Eastern District of New York
William Francis Kuntz II is a United States district judge on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. The United States Senate confirmed him on October 3, 2011. He received his judicial commission on October 4, 2011.
Judge Kuntz was a commercial litigator in private practice in New York, and had been a partner at the law firm of Baker Hostetler since 2005. He has been a partner at several law firms in New York during his career, including Torys LLP from 2001 to 2004, Seward & Kissel LLP from 1994 to 2001, and Milgrim, Thomajan, Jacobs & Lee from 1986 to 1994. In addition, he worked as Counsel at Constantine Cannon from 2004 to 2005, and as an associate at Shearman & Sterling LLP from 1978 to 1986. Since 1987, Kuntz has served as a Commissioner of the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board, supervising hundreds of investigations into allegations of abuse by members of the New York City Police Department. From 1987 to 2003, he was an adjunct associate professor of law at Brooklyn Law School, teaching a course in American legal history. He received his A.B. from Harvard College in 1972 and his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1977. Kuntz also received an M.A. and Ph.D. in American History from Harvard University in 1974 and 1979, respectively.
William Rand Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law, University of North Carolina School of Law
William (Bill) Marshall joined the Carolina Law faculty in 2001 and serves as the William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law. His teaching and research interests include the first amendment, presidential power, election law, federal jurisdiction, federal judicial selection, civil procedure, and media law. Marshall is the author of numerous book chapters, articles, and essays on free speech, separation of powers, the Establishment Clause, and the Free Exercise Clause. His work has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Supreme Court Review, and the University of Chicago Law Review, among others.
Marshall received his law degree from the University of Chicago and his undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Marshall was Deputy Counsel to the President and Deputy Assistant to the President during the Clinton Administration and also served as the Solicitor General for the State of Ohio. He has taught at the Northwestern, Boston University, Vanderbilt, Ohio State, DePaul, Case Western Reserve, William and Mary, and the University Connecticut law schools. Prior to beginning his teaching career, Marshall was a Special Assistant Attorney General for the State of Minnesota.
Richard and Frances Mallery Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Constitutional Law Center, Stanford Law School
Michael W. McConnell is the Richard and Frances Mallery Professor and Faculty Director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 2002 to 2009, he served as a Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He was nominated by President George W. Bush, a Republican, and confirmed by a Democratic Senate by unanimous consent. McConnell has previously held chaired professorships at the University of Chicago and the University of Utah, and visiting professorships at Harvard and NYU. He teaches courses on constitutional law, constitutional history, First Amendment, and interpretive theory. He has published widely in the fields of constitutional law and theory, especially church and state, equal protection, and separation of powers. His book, “The President Who Would Not Be King: Executive Power Under the Constitution,” was published by Princeton University Press in 2020, based on the Tanner Lectures in Human Values, which he delivered at Princeton in 2019. His latest book, co-authored with Nathan Chapman, “Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience,” was published by Oxford University Press in mid-2023. McConnell has argued sixteen cases in the United States Supreme Court, most recently Carney v. Adams (2020). defending a provision of the Delaware Constitution requiring political balance on that state’s courts. More recently, he was co-counsel in Gonzalez v. Google. He earned his B.A. from Michigan State University and his J.D. from the University of Chicago, and has received honorary degrees from Notre Dame University and Michigan State. He served as law clerk to Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. and D.C. Circuit Chief Judge J. Skelly Wright. He has been Assistant General Counsel of the Office of Management & Budget, Assistant to the Solicitor General of the Department of Justice, and a member of the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board. He is Senior of Counsel to the law firm Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, and is co-chair of Meta’s Oversight Review Board.
Executive Vice President, The Federalist Society
Dean Reuter is Executive Vice President at the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. He has served in two federal government agency Offices of the Inspector General, as Counsel to the Inspector General and Deputy Inspector General, responsible for policing the use of federal funds granted and contracted through those agencies. As such, he helped conduct and oversee criminal investigations across the country. He is the principal author of the non-fiction book, The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America's Deal with the Devil, and editor of Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State and Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security. He was appointed by the President and served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and recently served as an appointee on the U.S. Commission on Presidential Scholars. He is a graduate of Hood College (BA with Honors) and the University of Maryland School of Law.
Assistant Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice
As head of the Criminal Division, Mr. Breuer oversees nearly 600 attorneys who prosecute federal criminal cases across the country and help develop the criminal law. He also works closely with the nation’s 94 U.S. Attorneys’ Offices in connection with the investigation and prosecution of criminal matters in their districts. Mr. Breuer is a national leader on a range of federal law enforcement priorities, including financial fraud, health care fraud, public corruption, and violence along the Southwest Border. He has also been a leading voice on policy issues related to criminal law enforcement, including the scope of prosecutors’ discovery obligations in federal criminal cases and sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine offenses. Mr. Breuer regularly testifies before Congress on the Administration’s policy initiatives and advises the Attorney General and the White House on matters of criminal law. Mr. Breuer also serves as the Department's representative on the Atrocities Prevention Board, which President Obama announced in April 2012. For his work as Assistant Attorney General, the National Law Journal named Mr. Breuer a "Visionary" in the Washington, D.C. legal community, and he was recently ranked sixth on Ethisphere’s list of The 100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics.
Mr. Breuer began his legal career in 1985 as an Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan, where he prosecuted violent crime, such as armed robbery and gang violence, white collar crime, and other offenses. In 1989, he joined the law firm of Covington & Burling LLP, where he worked until 1997, when he joined the White House Counsel’s Office as Special Counsel to President William Jefferson Clinton. As Special Counsel, Mr. Breuer assisted in defending President Clinton in the Senate impeachment trial.
Mr. Breuer returned to Covington in 1999 as co-chair of the White Collar Defense and Investigations practice group, where he specialized in white collar criminal defense and complex civil litigation and represented individuals and corporations in matters involving high-stakes legal risks. He also vice-chaired the firm’s Public Service Committee. At Covington, Mr. Breuer developed a reputation as one of the top defense lawyers in the country. He has been recognized as a leading litigator by numerous publications, including American Lawyer ("45 Under 45"), Chambers USA, The Best Lawyers in America, Guide to the World’s Leading White Collar Crime Lawyers, The International Who’s Who of Business Lawyers, and Washingtonian ("Big Guns"). He is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, a Barrister of the Edward Bennett Williams Inn of Court, and a member of the American Law Institute.
Mr. Breuer received his B.A. from Columbia College in 1980 and his J.D. from Columbia Law School in 1985.
Partner, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP
A partner in the Litigation Department, Mark Mendelsohn is Chair of the FCPA Group, and a member of the White Collar Crime and Regulatory Defense, Internal Investigations, and Securities Litigation Practice Groups. Prior to joining Paul, Weiss, Mark served as the deputy chief of the Fraud Section of the Criminal Division of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), and is internationally acknowledged and respected as the architect and key enforcement official of DOJ’s modern Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) enforcement program.
As deputy chief of the Fraud Section from 2005 to 2010, Mark was responsible for overseeing all DOJ investigations and prosecutions under the FCPA, and for supervising a team of trial attorneys with respect to investigations and prosecutions of a wide variety of federal white collar crimes including money laundering, mail and wire fraud, procurement fraud, Arms Export Control Act and International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) violations, and violations of economic and trade sanctions laws and regulations, including with respect to the United Nations Oil for Food Program. During his tenure, Mark handled hundreds of voluntary disclosures of illicit corporate payments, worked closely with attorneys in the Division of Enforcement at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, helped establish and worked closely with the Federal Bureau of Investigation's FCPA squad at the Washington Field Office, negotiated numerous corporate plea, deferred and non-prosecution agreements on behalf of DOJ, and participated in the appointment of, interaction with, and reporting by more than 16 corporate compliance monitors. Mark led an effort to forge closer working relationships with foreign regulators in connection with transnational bribery cases, resulting in coordinated settlements with the Munich Public Prosecutor in Germany in the Siemens prosecutions and coordinated settlements with the U.K.'s Serious Fraud Office in the BAE and Innospec prosecutions, among others. Mark was also responsible for administering DOJ's FCPA Opinion Release Procedure, including issuing the seminal opinion on FCPA transactional diligence and successor liability (Op. Rel. 08-02).
In addition to case-related responsibilities, Mark had significant policy responsibilities, including principal policy responsibilities related to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Anti-bribery Convention. As a member of the U.S. delegation to the OECD Bribery Working Group, Mark served as a lead examiner for the follow-up review of Japan's implementation of the OECD Anti-bribery Convention, played a key role in peer review of the United Kingdom including consultation regarding its Bribery Act of 2010, negotiated the 2009 Anti-Bribery Recommendation, and played a leading role in the drafting and adoption of the OECD's "Good Practice Guidance on Internal Controls, Ethics and Compliance."
During his tenure administering the DOJ's FCPA enforcement program, the DOJ brought more than 50 prosecutions against corporations for violations of the FCPA and related offenses, resulting in more than $1.5 billion in criminal penalties. During that same period, DOJ brought approximately 80 prosecutions against individuals. Among the notable prosecutions were the following: U.S. v. Siemens AG, et al.; U.S. v. Kellogg Brown & Root, LLC and U.S. v. Albert "Jack" Stanley; U.S. v. Congressman William J. Jefferson; U.S. v.BAE Systems plc; U.S. v. Baker Hughes, et al.; U.S. v. Titan Corp.; U.S. v. Statoil ASA; U.S. v.Monsanto; Lucent Technologies, Inc.; U.S. v. Willbros Group, Inc., et al.; U.S. v. Christian Sapsizian, et al.; U.S. v. Viktor Kozeny and Frederick Bourke, Jr.; U.S. v. Gerald and Patricia Green; U.S. v. Innospec, Inc.; and U.S. v. Daimler AG.
Prior to joining the Fraud Section, Mark was senior counsel in the DOJ's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section in Washington, D.C., and prior to that served for nearly six years as an assistant U.S. attorney in the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York. During his service with the U.S. Attorney's Office, Mark tried numerous cases to verdict and argued several appeals before the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. As a federal prosecutor, Mark was a recipient of the Attorney General's Award for Distinguished Service for the "Investigation into Corrupt Payments by Siemens AG," and a recipient of the Assistant Attorney General's Award for "The Safeguarding and Maintenance of Confidence in the American Marketplace." Mark has been recognized by Ethisphere Institute in 2011 as a "Top Gun" among "Attorneys Who Matter," in 2009 as a "Government Star" among "Attorneys Who Matter In Corporate Compliance," and in 2007 and 2008 as one of the "100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics." In 2010 and 2011, Mark was selected as one of the 2010 Lawdragon "500 Leading Lawyers in America." Mark is also ranked by Chambers as an International Trade/FCPA expert.
Mark has spoken frequently as a faculty member, panelist and keynote speaker at numerous FCPA, anti-corruption, corporate compliance, securities fraud, money laundering, and white collar crime programs and conferences. He teaches International Criminal Law as a visiting professor at the University of Virginia School of Law and has also been an adjunct lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School. Mark is member of the Edward Bennett Williams Inn of Court and a member of the Board of Directors of Transparency International-USA.
Former United States Attorney General
Michael B. Mukasey is the former Attorney General of the United States, the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. As Attorney General from November 2007 to January 2009, he oversaw the U.S. Department of Justice and advised on critical issues of domestic and international law.
From 1988 to 2006, Judge Mukasey served as a district judge in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, becoming Chief Judge in 2000.
From 1972 to 1976, Judge Mukasey served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and as Chief of the Official Corruption Unit from 1975 to 1976. His practice consisted of criminal litigation on behalf of the government, including investigation and prosecution of narcotics, bank robbery, interstate theft, securities fraud, fraud on the government and bribery. From 1976 to 1987 and from 2006 to 2007 he was in private practice.
Judge Mukasey has received numerous honors, including the Federal Bar Council’s Learned Hand Medal for Excellence in Federal Jurisprudence. He served as Chairman of the Committee on Public Access to Information and Proceedings of the New York Bar Association from 1984 to 1987. He served on the Federal Courts Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York from 1979 to 1982 and its Communications Law Committee from 1983 to 1986. Judge Mukasey was also a part-time lecturer at Columbia School of Law from January 1993 to May 2007, teaching trial advocacy.
He received his LL.B. from Yale Law School in 1967 and his B.A. from Columbia College in 1963.
Chief Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
William H. Pryor Jr. serves as Chief Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
In 2013–18, he served on the United States Sentencing Commission and, in 2017–18, served as Acting Chair.
He has taught as a visiting professor at the University of Alabama School of Law and previously taught as an adjunct professor at the Cumberland School of Law of Samford University.
He served as the 45th Attorney General of Alabama from 1997 to 2004. When he took office, he was the youngest attorney general in the nation. In his reelection, he received the highest percentage of votes of any statewide candidate.
He graduated magna cum laude from Tulane Law School where he finished first in the common-law curriculum and was editor in chief of the Tulane Law Review. He then served as a law clerk for Judge John Minor Wisdom of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
He is a member of The American Law Institute and an Adviser for the RESTATEMENT OF THE LAW THIRD, CONFLICT OF LAWS. He is a coauthor with Bryan Garner, Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, and several other judges of a treatise, THE LAW OF JUDICIAL PRECEDENT. He has published in the Yale Law Journal, Columbia Law Review, Virginia Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Yale Law & Policy Review, George Mason Law Review, Florida Law Review, Alabama Law Review, Case Western Reserve Law Review, and Tulane Law Review. He has published op-eds in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, National Review, and USA Today. He has debated at National Lawyers’ Conventions of the Federalist Society (including on National Public Radio) and at the Oxford Union in the United Kingdom. And he is listed among several “widely admired judicial writers” in Bryan Garner’s The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style.
He is a member of the Tulane Law School Hall of Fame and has received the Defender of the Constitution Award from the Heritage Foundation, the Jurist of the Year Award from the Texas Review of Law & Politics, and the St. Thomas More Award from the St. Thomas More Society of Atlanta. Judge Pryor is also a proud member of the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution.
Partner, McGuireWoods LLP
George Terwilliger is co-head of the firm's white collar practice and leads the firm's Strategic Response and Crisis Management practice group. Following his fifteen years of public service in the US Department of Justice, where he began as a law clerk and concluded as Acting Attorney General, George has provided counsel in government and internal investigations, agency enforcement proceedings and in civil and criminal litigation. He has represented many of the nation's and the world's largest corporations, including major financial institutions, energy companies, public institutions as well as leading business and government officials, including members of the US Senate and House as well as cabinet officials. He has also represented lawyers and corporate legal departments in investigations. As a result of both his private sector work and government positions, George is called upon to provide counsel as well as commentary to government officials, Congress and private organizations on national security, homeland defense, terrorism, and other public policy and legal issues. George's work regularly involves providing counsel in the executive suites and boardrooms of major corporations.
In private practice for international law firms, George has represented national and international financial, energy, telecommunications, industrial and healthcare companies. He is a recognized expert in leading credible corporate internal investigations and his experience designing and executing both targeted and global legal compliance reviews has involved work in more than 60 countries around the globe. George is an expert on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and regularly provides counsel to companies addressing FCPA issues. No stranger to high stakes litigation and crisis events, George helped lead the Bush-Cheney legal team in the 2000 Florida vote recount, served as special outside counsel to a Senate committee investigating vote fraud allegations, served as counsel to an executive commission on gambling, and has represented many clients in politically charged election law and similar cases. He has guided corporations and individual through high stakes matters of intense public interest. He represented an incumbent president in First Amendment litigation concerning the right to have an inaugural prayer said in a public ceremony.
At the Department of Justice, George served for 10 years as a frontline federal prosecutor, handling hundreds of investigations, trials and appeals, including in white collar and national security cases. President Ronald Reagan appointed him as a U.S. attorney, and he next served as the deputy attorney general and as acting attorney general during the George H.W. Bush administration. As Deputy Attorney General, George ran the Justice Department's operations, overseeing all the nation's federal prosecutors, as well as the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. He also had leadership responsibility in several national and international crises, including a hostage-taking in a federal prison and the federal law enforcement response to domestic unrest in Los Angeles. In several instances, he personally handled negotiations of high-profile criminal and civil matters in the United States and abroad.
Executive in Residence, Wake Forest University School of Business
John Allison is an Executive in Residence at the Wake Forest School of Business. He is a member of the Cato Institute’s Board of Directors and Chairman of the Executive Advisory Council of the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives. Allison was president and CEO of the Cato Institute from October 2012 to April 2015. Prior to joining Cato, Allison was chairman and CEO of BB&T Corporation, the 10th-largest financial services holding company headquartered in the United States. During his tenure as CEO from 1989 to 2008, BB&T grew from $4.5 billion to $152 billion in assets. He was recognized by theHarvard Business Reviewas one of the top 100 most successful CEOs in the world over the last decade.
Allison has received the Corning Award for Distinguished Leadership, been inducted into the North Carolina Business Hall of Fame, and received the Lifetime Achievement Award from theAmerican Banker. He is the author of The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure: Why Pure Capitalism Is the World Economy’s Only Hope and The Leadership Crisis and the Free Market Cure: Why the Future of Business Depends on the Return to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. In addition, he is a former Distinguished Professor of Practice at Wake Forest University School of Business, and serves on the Board of Visitors at the business schools at Wake Forest, Duke, and the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill.
Allison is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. He received his master’s degree in management from Duke University and is also a graduate of the Stonier Graduate School of Banking. Allison is the recipient of six honorary doctorate degrees.
Member, Board of Governors , Federal Reserve System
Michael S. Barr took office as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on July 19, 2022, for an unexpired term ending January 31, 2032. Mr. Barr served as the Vice Chair for Supervision of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from July 19, 2022, to February 28, 2025.
Prior to his appointment to the Board, Mr. Barr was the Joan and Sanford Weill Dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, the Frank Murphy Collegiate Professor of Public Policy, the Roy F. and Jean Humphrey Proffitt Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, and the founder and faculty director of the University of Michigan's Center on Finance, Law & Policy. At the University of Michigan Law School, Mr. Barr taught financial regulation and international finance and co-founded the International Transactions Clinic and the Detroit Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Project.
Mr. Barr served as the U.S. Department of the Treasury's assistant secretary for financial institutions, 2009-2010. Under President William J. Clinton, he served as the Treasury Secretary's special assistant, as deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury, as special adviser to the President, and as a special adviser and counselor on the policy planning staff at the U.S. Department of State.
Additionally, Mr. Barr served as a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter during October Term 1993, and previously to the Honorable Pierre N. Leval, then of the Southern District of New York.
Mr. Barr received a BA in history from Yale University, an MPhil in international relations from Oxford University, and a JD from Yale Law School.
Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States
Neil M. Gorsuch, Associate Justice, was born in Denver, Colorado, August 29, 1967. He and his wife Louise have two daughters. He received a B.A. from Columbia University, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, and a D.Phil. from Oxford University. He served as a law clerk to Judge David B. Sentelle of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and as a law clerk to Justice Byron White and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy of the Supreme Court of the United States. From 1995–2005, he was in private practice, and from 2005–2006 he was Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice. He was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in 2006. He served on the Standing Committee on Rules for Practice and Procedure of the U.S. Judicial Conference, and as chairman of the Advisory Committee on Rules of Appellate Procedure. He taught at the University of Colorado Law School. President Donald J. Trump nominated him as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and he took his seat on April 10, 2017.
Senior Advisor, US Policy Metrics and Former U.S. Senator, Texas
Senator Gramm is a Senior Advisor at US Policy Metrics, overseeing our policy advisory team and acting as our Ambassador in Washington DC. Before US Policy Metrics, Senator Gramm was the Vice-Chairman of UBS Investment Bank for 9 years. At UBS he focused on providing strategic economic, political and policy advice to major corporate and institutional clients all around the world. He provided senior leadership on such landmark IPOs as Visa, Bank of China, China Merchants Bank and LGPhillips in Korea. He was instrumental in the follow-on equity offering for the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and the privatization of Telstra in Australia.
Senator Gramm served six years in the US House and eighteen years in the US Senate. His legislative record includes landmark bills like the Gramm-Latta Budget, which reduced federal spending, rebuilt national defense and mandated the Reagan tax cut and the Gramm-Rudman Act, which placed the first binding constraints on federal spending. As Chairman of the Banking Committee, Senator Gramm steered through legislation modernizing banking, insurance and securities law, which had been languishing in Congress for 60 years. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act allowed banks, securities firms and insurance companies to affiliate as part of a financial services holding company. Dodd-Frank did not change Gramm-Leach-Bliley but expanded it by requiring systemically significant non-banks to become financial services holding companies.
Phil Gramm holds a Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in economics, the subject he taught at Texas A&M University for 12 years. He has published numerous articles and books on subjects ranging from monetary theory and policy to private property and the economics of mineral extraction.
He is married to Dr. Wendy Lee Gramm, former Chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission under Presidents Reagan and Bush. They have two sons, Marshall and Jeff and four grandchildren, Caroline, Will, Joshua and Gilbert.
Managing Director, Promontory Financial Group, LLC
Bill brings an exceptional blend of experience and insights to his work with clients, having been a banker, California’s Commissioner of Financial Institutions, and a member of the Financial Stability Oversight Council. He works with financial institutions on corporate governance and organizational design, compliance program design and implementation, anti-money laundering programs, senior management reviews, and strategic planning.
Bill’s financial services experience spans the corporate sector, the executive branches of both state and federal government, academia, and think tanks. He earned a reputation as an open, fair, and pragmatic regulator during four years as Commissioner of Financial Institutions in California, leading the agency through a period of economic upheaval both in the state and nationwide. His vast knowledge and understanding of the financial system led to his selection as the state banking supervisors’ representative on the Financial Stability Oversight Council, a federal agency created by the Dodd-Frank Act to foster coordination among financial regulators in order to identify systemic risks to the nation’s financial stability.
Before his appointment to state office, Bill was an independent consultant with Promontory while also serving as a visiting professor of economics and finance for the Graduate School of Management at the University of California-Davis. He worked on a wide array of client engagements at Promontory, in areas that included governance, due diligence, compliance, and strategy.
During nine years with Bank of America, Bill was managing director of Banc of America Securities and senior vice president of strategic policy development and planning for the bank. Earlier, he worked for five years as director of policy analysis for Citicorp.
Bill was J. Edward Lundy Scholar and director of the financial markets project at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. He served under President Reagan as senior staff economist and special assistant to the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Judge Carlos Bea serves as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He received his Bachelor's Degree from Stanford University in 1956 and his J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1958. Judge Bea was born in San Sebastian, Spain, and immigrated with his family to Cuba in 1939. In 1952, he represented Cuba on the Cuban National basketball team in the Helsinki Olympics. Judge Bea became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1958. He engaged in private practice in San Francisco, principally in the area of civil trials (jury and non-jury), from 1959-75 at Dunne, Phelps & Mills and from 1975-90 at Carlos Bea, A Law Corporation. He taught courses in civil litigation advocacy at Hastings College of Law and Stanford Law School. From 1990 to 2003, Judge Bea served as a judge of the San Francisco Superior Court. He was nominated by President George W. Bush to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and was confirmed in 2003.
Judge Bea and his wife Louise reside in San Francisco, where they raised their four sons, Sebastian, Alexander, Nicholas, and Dominic.
President and CEO, Castro Synergies, LLC and Commissioner, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
Marty Castro is the President and CEO of Castro Synergies, LLC, which provides strategic consulting services to corporations, entrepreneurs and non-profit organizations that seek to collaborate with and have a positive social impact on diverse communities.
Mr. Castro was appointed by President Barack Obama to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in January of 2011.
In December 2009, Mr. Castro was appointed by Illinois Governor Pat Quinn to Chair the Illinois Human Rights Commission. The Human Rights Commission is the State public body that arbitrates complaints of civil rights violations in housing, employment, public accommodations and financial credit.
Mr. Castro is chair of the board of the National Museum of Mexican Art, the only accredited Latino Museum in the United States. He also serves on the board of the Chicago Community Trust. Mr. Castro is a former national board member of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and former chair of the Hispanic National Bar Association’s U.S. Supreme Court Committee. Mr. Castro is also the former chair of the Judicial Nominations Commission for the Northern District of Illinois, by appointment of U.S. Senator Richard Durbin.
For his leadership and accomplishments, Mr. Castro has received numerous awards and recognitions, including the National Medical Fellowships’ Humanitarian Award; the Hispanic National Bar Association’s Cesar Chavez Humanitarian Award; the Edwin A. Rothschild Civil Liberties Award from the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois; and the Thurgood Marshall Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of Corporate Counsel, Chicago Chapter.
Mr. Castro received his B.A. in political science in 1985 from DePaul University and his Juris Doctorate degree from the University of Michigan Law School in 1988.
Professor of Law, University of San Diego School of Law (Retired)
Gail Heriot is a recently retired law professor from the University of San Diego. She also served as a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 2007 to 2025. She is also the chairman of the board of the American Civil Rights Project and the chair emerita of the Civil Rights practice group at the Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy.
Professor Heriot is a prolific writer in the area of civil rights. She is the author of many law review articles. She is also the editor (along with Maimon Schwarzschild) of the 2021 anthology, A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education. Her upcoming book is entitled, Why We Walk on Eggshell: How Our Civil Rights Laws Helped Bring About the Woke Era—And the Trump Era, Too.
Her writings for a general audience have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the National Review and many other newspapers and magazines.
In 1996, she co-chaired the successful “Yes on Proposition 209” campaign, which amended the California Constitution to prohibit state-sponsored discrimination or preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin. In 2020, she co-chaired the “No on Proposition 16” campaign, which successfully prevented Proposition 209’s repeal.
Julius L. Chambers Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Civil Rights, University of North Carolina School of Law
Theodore M. Shaw is the Julius L. Chambers Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Civil Rights at the University of North Carolina School of Law at Chapel Hill. Professor Shaw teaches Civil Procedure and Advanced Constitutional Law/Fourteenth Amendment. Before joining the faculty of UNC Law School, from 2008-2014 Professor Shaw taught at Columbia University Law School, where he was Professor of Professional Practice. During that time he was also “Of Counsel” to the law firm of Norton Rose Fulbright (formerly Fulbright & Jaworski, LLP). His practice involved civil litigation and representation of institutional clients on matters concerning diversity and civil rights.
Professor Shaw was the fifth Director-Counsel and President of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., for which he worked in various capacities over the span of twenty-six years. He has litigated education, employment, voting rights, housing, police misconduct, capital punishment and other civil rights cases in trial and appellate courts, and in the United States Supreme Court.From 1982 until 1987, he litigated education, housing, and capital punishment cases and directed LDF's education litigation docket. In 1987, under the direction of LDF's third Director-Counsel, Julius Chambers, Mr. Shaw relocated to Los Angeles to establish LDF's Western Regional Office. In 1990, Mr. Shaw left LDF to join the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School, where he taught Constitutional Law, Civil Procedure and Civil Rights. While at Michigan, he played a key role in initiating a review of the law school's admissions practices and policies, and served on the faculty committee that promulgated the admissions program that was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003 in Grutter v. Bollinger.
In 1993, Mr. Shaw returned to LDF as Associate Director-Counsel, and in 2004, he became LDF's fifth Director-Counsel. Mr. Shaw's legal career began as a Trial Attorney in the Honors Program of the United States Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division in Washington, D.C., where he worked from 1979 until 1982.
Mr. Shaw has testified on numerous occasions before Congress and before state and local legislatures. His human rights work has taken him to Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America. In addition to teaching at Columbia and at Michigan Law School, Professor Shaw held the 1997-1998 Haywood Burns Chair at CUNY School of Law at Queens College and the 2003 Phyllis Beck Chair at Temple Law School. He was a visiting scholar at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia in 2008-2009. He is a member of the faculty of the Practicing Law Institute (PLI).
Mr. Shaw served on the Obama Transition Team after the 2008 presidential election, as team leader for the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.
Freelance Journalist and Author
Stuart Taylor, Jr. is a Washington writer focusing on legal and policy issues and a National Journal contributing editor. He occasionally practices law.
Taylor has coauthored three books. All have been acclaimed by commentators across the ideological spectrum. In January 2017, KC Johnson and Taylor authored The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America's Universities. In 2012, Richard Sander and Taylor authored Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It. In 2007, Taylor and Johnson authored Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Fraud. Sander and Taylor have also filed amicus briefs in Supreme Court cases involving admissions preferences.
Since 1980, Taylor has done reporting and commentary about issues ranging from the biggest Supreme Court cases to race, voting rights, mindlessly excessive criminal penalties, guilt-presuming campus rape processes, journalistic bias, the death penalty, war powers, gerrymandering, guns, polarization, civil liberties, national security, torture, campaign finance, education, impeachment, and other issues. He has often been called one of the nation's best legal journalists and is known for challenging both liberal and conservative conventional wisdom.
Taylor was a reporter for The New York Times from 1980-1988, covering legal affairs and then the Supreme Court. He wrote commentaries and long features for The American Lawyer, Legal Times and their affiliates from 1989-1997, and for National Journal and Newsweek from 1998 through 2010. He has written (less often) on a freelance basis for numerous publications since 2010. He has written op-eds for The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and The New York Daily News and longer commentaries for RealClearPolitics, The Atlantic, The New Republic, the (late) Weekly Standard, National Review, Slate, The Daily Beast, Harper’s, Reader’s Digest, Time and other magazines. He has been interviewed on all major television and radio networks. He taught “Law and the News Media” at Stanford Law School in 2011 and 2012 and practices law on occasion.
Taylor graduated from Princeton University in 1970 with an A.B. in History. After working as a reporter for the Baltimore Evening Sun and Sun from 1971-1974, he moved to Harvard Law School, was a Harvard Law Review note editor, and graduated in 1977 at the top of his class, with high honors. He also won a Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellowship and traveled around the world in 1977-1978 while studying freedom of the press in the United Kingdom and Kenya.
Taylor practiced law with Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, in Washington, D.C., from 1977-1980 before returning to journalism in 1980 by joining the Washington Bureau of The New York Times.
Taylor's journalism honors include the 2009 Northern California Innocence Project Media Award for his work on the Duke lacrosse rape fraud; a 2002 National Headliner Award for best special magazine column on one subject; and a share of The American Lawyer’s National Magazine Award for a March 1990 special issue on the drug war. He was a National Magazine Award finalist in 1993 and 1997 and was nominated by The New York Times for a Pulitzer Prize in 1988.
Sterling Professor of Law, Yale Law School
Akhil Reed Amar is Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, where he teaches constitutional law in both Yale College and Yale Law School. After graduating from Yale College, summa cum laude, in 1980 and from Yale Law School in 1984, and clerking for Judge (later Justice) Stephen Breyer, Amar joined the Yale faculty in 1985 at the age of 26. He is Yale’s only living professor to have won the University’s unofficial triple crown — the Sterling Chair for scholarship, the DeVane Medal for teaching, and the Lamar Award for alumni service.
Amar’s work has won awards from both the American Bar Association and the Federalist Society, and he has been cited by Supreme Court justices across the spectrum in more than 50 cases — tops among scholars under age 70. According to both Fred Shapiro’s landmark 2021 study of lifetime scholarly citations and Heinonline’s most recent tabulation of lifetime law-review citations, Amar is America’s second most-cited legal scholar still under age 70. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has written widely for popular publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Time, and The Atlantic. He was an informal consultant to the popular TV show The West Wing and his scholarship has been showcased on many broadcasts, including The Colbert Report, Morning Joe, AC360, Velshi, Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream, Fareed Zakaria GPS, Erin Burnett Outfront, and Constitution USA with Peter Sagal.
He is the author of more than a hundred law review articles and several books, including The Bill of Rights (1998 — winner of the Yale University Press Governors’ Award), America’s Constitution (2005 — winner of the ABA’s Silver Gavel Award), America’s Unwritten Constitution (2012 — named one of the year’s 100 best nonfiction books by The Washington Post), and The Constitution Today (2016 — named one of the year’s top ten nonfiction books by Time magazine). The first volume of his ambitious trilogy on American constitutional history from the Founding to the present, The Words That Made Us: America’s Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840, came out in May 2021. The second volume, Born Equal: Remaking America’s Constitution, 1840-1920, will be published in September 2025 and is already available for pre-order. All together, his nonfiction books have won two starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and three starred reviews from Kirkus—tops, it is believed, among legal scholars under age 70. Together with Vikram David Amar (YLS ’88), he has a bi-weekly column on the Supreme Court on the distinguished website SCOTUSblog. Along with Andy Lipka, he co-hosts a popular and free weekly podcast, Amarica’s Constitution, whose listeners are eligible for CLE credit in most American jurisdictions. A wide assortment of his articles and op-eds and video links to many of his public lectures and free online courses may be found at akhilamar.com.
U.S. Court of Appeals, First Circuit
David Barron was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in May 2014. He graduated from Harvard College in 1989 and Harvard Law School in 1994. From 1989 to 1991, he worked as a newspaper reporter. After graduating from law school, he clerked for Judge Stephen R. Reinhardt of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, from 1994 to 1995, and for Justice John Paul Stevens of the United States Supreme Court, from 1995 to 1996. He then worked as an attorney advisor for the Office of Legal Counsel of the United States Department of Justice, from 1996 to 1999. In 1999, Barron became an Assistant Professor at Harvard Law School. He became a full Professor at Harvard Law School in 2004, where he worked until he rejoined the Justice Department as Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, from 2009 to 2010. He then returned to the Harvard Law School faculty in 2010, where he was named the S. William Green Professor of Public Law in 2011, and worked until his appointment to the federal bench in 2014. Currently, Barron is the Honorable S. William Green Visiting Professor of Public Law at Harvard Law School. Barron has published articles in the Harvard Law Review, the Stanford Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal. His book, Waging War, won the 2017 William E. Colby Award.
Founding Partner, Boyden Gray & Associates
Ambassador C. Boyden Gray is the founding partner of Boyden Gray & Associates, a law and strategy firm in Washington, D.C., focused on constitutional and regulatory issues.
Mr. Gray worked in the White House for twelve years, first as counsel to the Vice President during the Reagan administration and then as White House Counsel to President George H.W. Bush. In the Reagan administration, he was Counsel to the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief, for which he wrote the original Executive Order 12291 requiring cost-benefit analysis and White House review of regulations (later renumbered as current EO 12866). In the George H.W. Bush Administration, Mr. Gray was in charge of judicial selection and was also instrumental in the enactment of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, the Energy Policy Act of 1992, and a cap-and-trade system for acid rain emissions. In 1993, he received the Presidential Citizens Medal. Under President George W. Bush, Mr. Gray was U.S. Ambassador to the European Union and U.S. Special Envoy to Europe for Eurasian Energy.
Mr. Gray practiced law for 25 years at the law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering and was chairman of the Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section of the American Bar Association from 2000 to 2002. Early in his career, Mr. Gray helped to develop the Business Roundtable and served as its first counsel. He is an adjunct professor at Antonin Scalia Law School and a former adjunct professor at NYU Law School (teaching energy and environmental law). Mr. Gray is on the Board of Directors of the Atlantic Council, the Federalist Society, Reason Foundation, and the Trust for the National Mall.
Mr. Gray earned his A.B. magna cum laude from Harvard, where he was an editor of the Crimson, and his J.D. with high honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was editor-in-chief of the Law Review. Mr. Gray served in the United States Marine Corps, and after law school, he clerked for Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
George C. Dix Professor in Constitutional Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
John O. McGinnis is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He also has an MA degree from Balliol College, Oxford, in philosophy and theology. Professor McGinnis clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. From 1987 to 1991, he was deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice. He is the author of Accelerating Democracy: Transforming Government Through Technology (Princeton 2013) and Originalism and the Good Constitution (Harvard 2013) (with M. Rappaport). He is a past winner of the Paul Bator award given by the Federalist Society to an outstanding academic under 40. He has been listed by the United States on the roster of panelists who may be called upon to decide World Trade Organization Disputes.
Ralph V. Whitworth Professor in Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Professor Nourse is one of the nation’s leading scholars of Congress, the separation of powers, and statutory interpretation. In addition to her scholarship, she has practiced as an attorney in the White House, the Department of Justice, the Senate, and in private practice. The story of her pioneering work on gender equality is told in Equal: Women Reshape American Law.
Her most recent book is “The Impeachments of Donald Trump: An Introduction to Constitutional Argument” (West 2021). In 2016, Harvard Press published her Misreading Law, Misreading Democracy, on the limits of textualism. She is one of the most-cited scholars on interpretation in the country and has recently co-authored Yale’s revised leading casebook, Statutes, Regulation & Interpretation (West 2024).
Professor Nourse has published widely on the power of the President and the separation of powers, Reclaiming the Constitutional Text from Originalism: The Case of Executive Power, 106 Calif. L. Rev. 1 (2018), and constitutional rights, In Reckless Hands (Norton 2008), the story of Skinner v. Oklahoma and American eugenics.
President Biden appointed Professor Nourse to serve as Vice-Chair of the United States Commission on Civil Rights in 2023, with her term expiring in 2029.
Professor Nourse previously served as Chief Counsel to then Vice President Biden under the Obama Administration. Prior to that role, she practiced as an appellate litigator in the Department of Justice and as Special Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Professor Nourse has held chairs at Emory University and the University of Wisconsin. She has been a visiting professor at Yale, NYU, University of Maryland, and Northwestern.
She began her legal career in New York, clerking for legendary trial judge of the Southern District of New York, Edward Weinfeld, and practicing at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind Wharton & Garrison. She left private practice to serve as junior counsel to the Senate-Iran Contra Committee. After serving on the appellate staff of the Civil Division, she was hired as a legal expert for then Senator Joseph Biden.
Professor Nourse is the co-Founder of the Supreme Court Interpretation Lab, which uses big data to analyze trends in Supreme Court analyses. She formerly served as Executive Director of the Georgetown Law Center on Congressional Studies.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit
Judge Randolph was confirmed by the Senate and appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by President George H. W. Bush in July 1990.
Judge Randolph received his B.S. degree in 1966 from Drexel University, majoring in economics and basic engineering. At Drexel, he was president of the debate society, vice president of the Student Senate, and a member of the varsity wrestling squad. In 1969, he received his J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, summa cum laude. Judge Randolph ranked first in his law school class all three years and was managing editor of the Law Review.
After graduation, Judge Randolph served as a law clerk to Judge Henry J. Friendly of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York.
Admitted to the California Bar in 1970 (and to the District of Columbia bar in 1973), Judge Randolph worked as Assistant to the Solicitor General, U.S. Department of Justice, in Washington, D.C., 1970-1973.
After two years in private practice, Judge Randolph was named Deputy Solicitor General of the United States, a position he held from 1975-1977.
In 1979, Judge Randolph was appointed Special Counsel to the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (the Ethics Committee) of the United States House of Representatives, remaining in this position until 1980.
In the 1980s, Judge Randolph held a number of positions while in private practice, including Special Assistant Attorney General for the states of New Mexico (1985 90), Utah (1986-1990) and Montana (1983-1990). He also served as a Member of the Advisory Panel of the Federal Courts Study Committee.
From 1971-1990, Judge Randolph argued 23 times in the United States Supreme Court, winning 20 of his cases.
As an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center from 1974-1978 he taught courses in civil procedure and injunctions. In 1992 he taught a course in constitutional law. He is a Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Law at George Mason School of Law and for the past ten years has been teaching First Amendment law. He also serves on the Judicial Advisory Board of the George Mason University Law and Economics Center.
From 1993 through 1995 Judge Randolph was a member of the Committee on Codes of Conduct of the Judicial Conference of the United States, and from 1995 to 1998 served as the Committee's chairman. He also served as the judicial liaison to the American Bar Association’s Administrative Law Section.
Judge Randolph is a member of the Board of Visitors at Drexel University Law School and was named to the “Drexel One Hundred” as a leading alumnus. In 2002 he was presented the James Wilson Award by the University of Pennsylvania Law School. In November 2005 he delivered the Fifth Annual Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture at the Annual Lawyers Convention of the Federalist Society. He has published numerous articles, the most recent of which is in the June 2006 issue of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy.
Judge Randolph is married to the Honorable Eileen J. O’Connor, formerly Assistant Attorney General, Tax Division, U.S. Department of Justice. His son John Trevor Randolph is an investment banker in New York. His daughter Cynthia Lee Randolph is an artist living in San Francisco.
Executive Vice President, The Federalist Society
Dean Reuter is Executive Vice President at the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. He has served in two federal government agency Offices of the Inspector General, as Counsel to the Inspector General and Deputy Inspector General, responsible for policing the use of federal funds granted and contracted through those agencies. As such, he helped conduct and oversee criminal investigations across the country. He is the principal author of the non-fiction book, The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America's Deal with the Devil, and editor of Liberty’s Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State and Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security. He was appointed by the President and served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and recently served as an appointee on the U.S. Commission on Presidential Scholars. He is a graduate of Hood College (BA with Honors) and the University of Maryland School of Law.
Showcase Panel IV: An Examination of Substantive Due Process and Judicial Activism
2012 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DCFifth Annual Rosenkranz Debate and Luncheon
2012 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DCAdministrative Law: The Administrative State After the Health Care Cases
2012 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DCTelecommunications: Communications Law Reform
2012 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DCEnvironmental Law: Federalism and the Energy Revolution: Can State and Federal Regulators Adapt to Innovations?
2012 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DCShowcase Panel III: Religion Clauses
2012 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DCCriminal Law: The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
2012 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DCFinancial Services: Dodd-Frank: Act Two and What's Next in Financial Services Laws and Regulations?
2012 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DCCivil Rights: Who Benefits from Affirmative Action and Race and Gender Consciousness?
2012 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DCShowcase Panel II: Separation of Powers
2012 National Lawyers Convention
Washington, DC